April 19th and still snowing

Seems like it should be time for the snow to be over but it's snowed twice this week. It snowed enough on Monday that they got the plows out (we had been speculating that they had already removed the plows from the town trucks).

Monday's snow melted. At 6:00 am this morning, there was no snow. The picture below was shot at 8:30 am. It melted again through the day and now it's dumping again.

We've had Nicko and Maya here this week while their parents visit Iceland. We've had a number of activities going on.

• I burned my last brush pile on Tuesday. With all of the snow that was on the pile,I wondered if I'd even be able to get it started. It wound up being the easiest burn of the year.
• Kristen and Maya have been sewing some clothes for Maya's American Girl dolls. Maya's been doing most of the stitching by hand.
• Kristen has wanted a raised strawberry bed back by her raised vegetable beds. I built her one on Wednesday and sited it just across the creek from the vegetable beds. The vegetable beds are both 4' x 8' and the strawberry bed is 2' x 8'.

The strawberry bed it to the right and back behind the vegetable beds,

-JC-

I'm a Lumberjack and That's OK

Well, not really..

Kristen has been after me to build a raised strawberry bed over on the other side of the creek that runs along the edge of the lawn. Her concern was a dead tree that she says has concerned her every time that she works with the vegetable beds. Naturally, that tree had to come down before work on the raised bed could commence.

After watching some This Old House and purchasing some tree felling wedges, I was confident that I could drop the tree across my burn area on the other side of the creek. It didn't quite work out that way.

The tree fell exactly where Kristen was afraid that it would go. It went right across the center of where the strawberry bed will be. It crushed the corner of the fence around one of the vegetable beds. This was easy to fix and did no damage to the actual bed.

The trunk was about 12" thick at the base and was about 75' high (I measured it once it was down). It came within about 6" of hitting the garage.

Here are a couple of pictures that Kristen took (as evidence for the next time that I go to cut down a tree):

I had obviously already started on the cleanup here. That's the stump back behind the leftmost of the 2 rocks at the top-left part of the picture. The bent corner post is at a 45 degree angle. The taller post is one of the bird houses that I had moved to safty (nice try!).

This bird house was unscathed (actually, they both came through fine).

-JC-

Wildlife Camera Clips

It's been a very snowy March. The fourth Nor'easter of the month should hit in the next couple of hours. We've been very fortunate here. We've had the snow and high winds but we've never lost power and, not being near the coast, we avoided all of the heavy flooding.

We've had our wildlife cameras out almost as long as we've lived here. We received our first camera for Christmas 2015 and our second this past Christmas. We've repositioned the cameras many times but have only captured animals a few times. Imagine our surprise this morning when I checked the cameras and found four animal clips (three taken one ofter another).

I'm attaching the animal clips but first, a photo of some very unusual icicles that we found over at the local school:

Oakham Center School has a metal roof and the heavy snow had started to slide off before it refroze. The icicles slid with it and ended up at this impossible angle. Notice that some of them continued to grow after the shift so they now appear to be curved.

Now here are those clips:

This deer clip was obviously taken on a different day.

Then we have this bobcat.

I almost missed the fox in this picture. It's in the

lower left corner at the beginning of the clip.

Finally, we have a coyote (or possibly, a coyote-wolf hybrid).We've heard them but we've never seen one.

-JC-

Bobcat Sightings

We've seen quite a few bobcats lately. They must live up in the woods behind the house. We keep running into them out in the driveway.

Bobcats have a reputation for having a rather nasty disposition so we give them a wide berth when we see them. They react strangely when they know that they're being watched. Even if they appeared to be in a hurry when first spotted, they'll suddenly start biding their time. Often, they'll just sit down and lick their paws while they stare back.

Kristen caught a couple of pictures of this one from one of the upstairs windows.

-JC-

Strange tracks in the snow

Don't know what this animal was but it was certainly different  At first, we were thinking that it might be an otter (which is certainly possible in this area) but online pictures weren't quite right. Porcupine was close (and we've certainly seen some of those). The closest match was a groundhog / woodchuck / marmot. Guess we'll never know for sure. Our wildlife camera was pointed in the right direction but turned up nothing.

-JC-

Fun with Pyromania

I've mentioned before that the burning season in Oakham is from January 15 until May 1. Permits are free and can be obtained online. Any time that you want to burn, you call the number on the permit to see if the Fire Department feels that the weather conditions are right and to get their authorization (they probably limit the number of fires each day).

Obviously you don't want to burn when it's too dry, too windy or when it's raining. A light covering of snow on the ground doesn't hurt. Light snow flurries are optimal.

I started this burn season with five burn piles. Three were right next to each other so it made sense to burn them at the same time. Neighbor Jim offered to help and, once he sized up the situation, we got the middle pile burning good and then used his Kubota backhoe to pull the other two piles over into the flames. Those piles were off to the left of where our wildlife camera was pointed so we only got pictures of the tractor moving in and out of frame.

This week, I decided to try the next pile by myself and, as it happened, the burn was mid frame. The following is one of the 48 movie clips that were taken.

A little diesel helps things along!

I still have one pile to burn. It's out on the other side of our leach field close to Barre Road. This last pile will be a bit different. The others were primarily multiflora rose vines which were horribly tangled up with each other. This one is mostly tree branches.

It's still a long time until May so I might still cut some more brush and get it burned. We'll have to see.

-JC-

Beautiful Snowy Morning

We were supposed to have some rain last night with maybe some light snow toward dawn. I don't know if we ever got the rain but we did get 4-5" of very wet snow (the heavy kind that sticks to everything). It was kind of windy as well so it's pretty spectacular this morning.

These first pictures (bluish tone) were taken out the windows early in the morning:

Off the farmers porch. That thing that looks like a giant potted cauliflower is a rhododendron.

Also off the farmers porch.

The birds go nuts when it snows. They may never find another bite to eat!

Out the upstairs front windows. Look at the snow on the utility lines!

We went for our daily walk after breakfast and then plowed the driveway. First, I took some pictures outside the house:

The windmill was turning madly but was unable to dislodge the snow that was caked to the blades.

Across the road.

Looking toward our house from up on Maple St.. On a normal winters day, you might see the house through there.

Walking down Barre St.  Our property is along the right side to the bottom of the hill.

There's a peek at the house from Barre St.

The temperature is dropping. It was about 32° F when we got up this morning. At 10am, it's 19° with a windchill of -1°. Surprisingly, it's very clear and sunny.

-JC-